Types of Questions

Good writers know how to ask generative questions – ones that lead to writing, deeper understanding, and idea development. You should learn to write:

• Questions that prompt you to notice and focus on key words, phrases, concepts, and examples
• Questions that prompt you to invent examples to test ideas
• Questions that prompt you to put the ideas or lines of inquiry of two more writers into conversation
• Questions that prompt you to get more information or to surface information or assumptions that lie beneath the surface
• Questions that prompt you to identify the perspective or viewpoint of a writer
• Questions that prompt you to view one writer’s idea from the perspective of a different writer
• Questions that prompt you to seek out other or alternative perspectives
• Questions that prompt you to check your understanding of what is being argued
• Questions that prompt you to determine how far you are willing to take an idea before it no longer seems true or correct
• Questions to understand the significance or implications of arguments
• Questions that prompt you to test or apply ideas to different situations or contexts
• Questions that prompt you to determine the relationships between ideas
• Questions to shift the direction of a conversation, redefine a problem, or look at phenomena through a different lens
• Questions to make connections – text-to-self, text-to-world, text-to-text